In consideration of the fact that it's so loud in my house right now that it's basically pointless to study, I'm going to write in here. Since my last update I completed Word Lists 27 - 29. On the tests I got these scores, respectively: 14/15, 15/15, 10/15. I'm sure that you can discern that I'm getting a bit irritated from the noise. My older brother has the loudest man in the world over to visit. My boyfriend and younger brother are playing Modern Warfare 2. I had to ask for the volume to be turned down twice because they don't need sound to play the game and I need quiet to study. Icing on the cake: my mom asked me to put the Barron's GRE prep book away while we eat dessert (pun intended). Umm, hello? To cheer myself up I'm going to write about the words that I've come across so far that stand out, starting with the words that Barron's book fails to define in its own Master Word List:
"martinet N. No talking at meals! No mingling with the servants! Miss Minchin was a martinet who insisted that the schoolgirls in her charge observe each regulation to the letter." (pg. 218)
"erotic ADJ. Films with significant erotic content are rated R; pornographic films are rated X." (pg. 194) *Don't worry: the link is just the dictionary.com definition.
What Barron's did for the (... 70 x 29... - 2...) 2028 other words was give the emboldened vocabulary word, indicate what part of speech it was in abbreviated form, define the word, and then offer at least one example of a sentence that contains the word. The above two words were missing the key part of a definition: defining the word. Just, duh.
So far I've only come across one word that I was tested on that didn't have anything written about it at all: "candid" in the test for Word List 7 (pg. 175).
Now I'm going to write about the words that made me smile because I was channeling my inner-nerd:
"matrix N. point of origin; array of numbers or algebraic symbols; mold or die. Some historians claim the Nile Valley was the matrix of Western civilization." (pg. 218) Oh, The Matrix...
"gratuitous ADJ. given freely; unwarranted; uncalled for. Quit making gratuitous comments about my driving; no one asked you for your opinion." (pg. 204) "GRATUITOUS AMOUNTS OF ENERGY!" Thank you, Powerthirst.
"juggernaut N. irresistible crushing force. Nothing could survive in the path of the juggernaut." (pg. 214) "I'M THE JUGGERNAUT...!" (explicit content) Who doesn't love videos of dubbed episodes of X-Men?
"aperture N. opening; hole. She discovered a small aperture in the wall, through which the insects had entered the room." (pg. 166) This was possibly my favorite nerd-word because it has to do with the game Portal. I'm going to try not to go into too much detail here, but in the game the evil company doing experiments is called "Aperture Science" and the game has to do with making portals (holes that lead to other places). Here's the song you hear when you win the game: Still Alive by Jonathan Coultron, sung by Ellen McLaine.
I'm going to write more later on other fun words, but for now I'm going to stop writing and get back to studying because it's significantly quieter here and I'm feeling much better than when I started writing this post.
Hey, I didn't get to tell you yet!:
Merry Christmas!
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